Final Europe trip, Post 4: More about Florence

On our second day in Florence, we set off for some local markets. They were in a park that we reached by walking a fair way alongside the river, and we had quite a successful shopping excursion! Delle got a shirt, and I got two shirts and a €10 carry-on-size suitcase. It came in rather handy as I could use it as a portable chair for the rest of the day! (Not to mention that it also came in pretty handy when we flew all of our purchases back to Australia!) The first photo below is of the view at breakfast that morning from the eating area at Camping Michelangelo, where we stayed...













Later on we came across the Florence Cathedral, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. This was a huge, grand church building with an exterior of white, green and pink marble. It also had a large dome that Delle lined up to climb to the top of! Below are some of my photos of the outside of the Cathedral, and some of Delle's photos of the amazing view of Florence from the top.

















We also found a couple of smaller markets, at one of which there was a bronze statue of a pig - a fountain that was no longer in use. The pig's snout was very shiny and smooth, and we observed some tourists rubbing its snout and throwing money into its mouth. To find out what it was all about, just now I looked up the pig and discovered that there is a little-known Hans Christian Andersen story about it ("The Metal Pig" or "The Bronze Pig"), which begins like this...

"In the city of Florence, not far from the Piazza del Granduca, runs a little street called Porta Rosa. In this street, just in front of the market-place where vegetables are sold, stands a pig, made of brass and curiously formed. The bright color has been changed by age to dark green; but clear, fresh water pours from the snout, which shines as if it had been polished, and so indeed it has, for hundreds of poor people and children seize it in their hands as they place their mouths close to the mouth of the animal, to drink..."



Click here if interested in reading the rest! We purchased a few ties at this market (the one in the second photo below) - including yours, Dad! Nearby, there were some pavement artists hard at work on a chalk painting to raise money for their yearly permit fee to "occupy public space", which had just been increased to nine times its previous amount!! :O









That night we had tea at a restaurant across the road from Camping Michelangelo, and the next day we were off to Lucca, near Pisa, via the beautiful Tuscan countryside - which I'll tell you all about next time!

Final Europe trip, Post 3: Fabulous Florence

On Monday we set off from Venice to Florence (Firenze in Italian) in our hire car. We had lunch in some random town along the way, sheltering from the pouring rain and eating delicious pasta dishes that became some of our favourite meals on the trip.

When we reached Florence, where none of us had ever been before, we discovered that our accommodation for the next two nights - a 3-bed house tent at Camping Michelangelo - was on the side of a hill overlooking the beautiful city of Florence, and right next to the Piazzale Michelangelo, where one of the copies of Michelangelo's statue of David is (Florence is home to one other copy and the original). The first photo below shows our house tent and hire car, the second photo shows our campsite from the Piazzale Michelangelo (it's hidden under all the trees), and the third and fourth photos show the view of Florence from the Piazzale, and David.



That evening we wandered around the centre of Florence, an absolutely gorgeous city with lots of bridges, lots of scooters and motorbikes, and lots of elaborate gelati displays (see photos below). We were a little sad to discover that gelati had been much cheaper in Venice though (but we still ate some). We also saw quite a lot of small electric city buses, and even an electric three-wheeled one-seater car charging in a carpark (yellow one in photo below)!



There was a square in the city centre where there were a lot of statues, including the other copy of David and a Neptune. We think this was outside the museum where the real David is, which we didn't see. In another part of the city, across from the river in what we've just discovered was the courtyard between the Uffizi Gallery's two wings (thanks Wikipedia!), Ben was quite excited to find a statue of Machiavelli.



One of the things we loved about Florence was the Ponte Vecchio (meaning "old bridge" in Italian). This is a bridge with shops along both sides of it (mostly jewellers, souvenir shops and art dealers these days), and from the outside you can see that the shops jut out from the base of the bridge a little, and are supported by steel rods. Here are some photos of the bridge from various angles (the last photo is of the sunset as seen from the Ponte Vecchio this first night)...



We crossed the bridge a few times that night and the next day, and on this first night the centre of the bridge was occupied by a guitar-playing busker who had quite a sizeable audience gathered on both sides of the bridge, enjoying his songs and taking photos of the magnificent sunset. There is a gap in the shops on both sides of the bridge at the centre, making for a lovely view of the river in both directions, and a brilliant spot for a concert!! We listened to him for a while and bought his CD. Check out the photos and video below!

That night we had scrumptious pizzas for tea, and experimented with various camera settings to get some night shots of Florence on our way back up the hill to Camping Michelangelo. Check out the awesome night view from the Piazzale Michelangelo (fifth photo below)...



I think I've unintentionally toned down my raving about places in blog entries over the last year :P, but Florence is truly beautiful... interesting architecture, lots of culture, great shopping, wonderful food, and friendly locals. On one of our nights in Florence, a very old and small Italian lady, who spoke only a little English, saw Ben lift me down from a wall and stopped to call him a gentleman and wish us a nice holiday. :) Florence was the perfect place to visit in between seeing Venice and Pisa (our next destination), which are both very comercialised and feel as though they would be almost empty if all the tourists were to disappear.

Anyway, I was going to write about the next day now as well, but this entry is already quite long, so more next time! :) Bye for now!

Final Europe trip, Post 2: Venice by day

Continuing on from the second last post, the next day we headed back to Venice on the ferry for our full day of sightseeing. It was a beautiful sunny day and we spent it wandering fairly aimlessly, shopping for souvenirs, eating gelati, and doing a walking tour with a bunch of other tourists and a nice, short Italian lady who held an orange scarf aloft on a stick so we could find her in the crowd. :)

The tour took a couple of hours and included going through the famous Basilica di San Marco (St Mark's Basilica), which has amazing mosaics both outside and inside, and a rather uneven marble floor (photos not allowed inside). We also saw the Bridge of Sighs, the Rialto Bridge, and of course lots of alleyways, canals, bridges, and gondolas...



This was the second time Ben and I had been to Venice (the first time was during our 2006 trip), and I definitely enjoyed it more this time (last time we couldn't even find the start of the walking tour despite having already paid for it!), but Venice is still Venice... beautiful, old, amazing and colourful... and very touristy! Delle found it amusing that the reasons for Venice being such a unique and famous destination also mean it is a completely impractical place to live... eg. no roads or cars on most of the island, daily garbage collections done by boat etc!

The next day, we picked up our hire car (that was an experience in itself for Ben...!) and set off for our next destination, one that was to become a highlight for us all: Florence, Italy. And until the next entry, goodbye!